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(Photo credit: Dyanna Hyde)

Hans Riegel recently died at age 90. He was not a household name, even in his home country of Germany. But he changed the world for the better. He brought us gummi bears.

Of course, life would go on without the gelatinous fruit-flavored candies. Nevertheless, Riegel gave pleasure to millions of people. His father concocted the precursor to the bear candies in 1923. After the latter’s death, Riegel fils became the master marketer for Haribo, his father’s candy firm. At his death Riegel was estimated to be worth $3 billion.

Politicians routinely crusade against wealth and inequality, but much of that occurs naturally when people create products and offer services benefiting the rest of us. Our lives have been immeasurably enriched by the ingenuity and inspiration of others. They deserve to be enriched financially in return.

Today people live on their cell phones. Once we didn’t even have telephones. Thank Alexander Graham Bell, born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, for this invention. His father was an elocution professor who taught the deaf to speak. In 1876 the son allowed us to speak to people around the world. The following year he and two colleagues established Bell Telephone, which eventually became AT&T.

The internal combustion engine auto came from Karl Benz. He was a design engineer who in 1886 created the two-stroke engine, and won a patent for what he termed the “motor car.” He started his own company, which eventually merged into what is now Daimler-Benz—which makes the famed Mercedes. In 1888 Benz’s wife, Bertha, drove his motorized three-wheel contraption from Mannheim to Pforzheim, demonstrating to the world that the vehicle worked.

Who among us has not enjoyed Life Savers, the circular fruit-flavored candy? In 1903 Clarence Crane started what became the world’s largest Maple Sugar business. He sold that company and moved into chocolate production—obviously a worthy endeavor—but found that some people didn’t want to purchase a sweet that melted during the summer. So he created the hard fruit candy, originally only in peppermint, which he called Life Savers because they looked like ship life preservers.

Helen Greiner came up with the Roomba vacuum cleaner robot in 2002. Born in London and the daughter of Hungarian refugees, she was a fan of Star Wars’ R2D2. Her family moved to the U.S. and she went to MIT—naturally!—and formed a company, iRobot, with two other MIT graduates. She initially focused on research and military robots, before turning to the consumer market. She said her objective is “A robot in every office building. A robot in every home that has a computer. We will change the world with this technology.”

No one knows who actually created brandy, a favorite of alcohol connoisseurs the world over. A 16th century Dutch ship captain figured out how to save cargo space by removing water from wine. At the destination he added water and called the final product Bradwijn, which meant “burned wine.” The new drink later was known as brandy.

Who could live without a computer today? John Mauchly and John Eckert created the first computer in 1946. The former, an engineer and physicist, wanted to find a better way to make the complex computations necessary for weather forecasting. The latter was an electrical engineer who joined Mauchly to develop the Electronic Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, the first general digital computer. They also created the first commercial computer company. Consumers now play with far more powerful computers.

Thomas Edison gave us light bulbs in 1879. Inventors routinely build on what came before them. Humphrey Davy made the first incandescent light in 1800. Warren De La Rue added a bulb in 1820. Many others attempted to create a commercially viable bulb. Joseph Swan might have beaten Edison, who accounted for a record 1093 patents—and developed cement kilns, fire alarms, stock tickers, and improved telegraphs, among many other gadgets. But Edison bought Swan’s patent and received attendant credit and fame. Edison’s bamboo carbon filament lasted 1200 hours, making it the real deal.

The first 3-D printer was created in 1983 by Chuck Hall, who was working at a small California manufacturing firm. His day job was creating ultraviolet-light curable resins. Off-hours he experimented with using the resin to create plastic models. His first creation: a tea cup. Today the devices have been used to produce everything from tools to guns.

Not every invention is utilitarian. During World War II the U.S. government needed synthetic rubber to meet its vast demand for boots, tires, and more. General Electric engineer James Wright worked at it, but his 1943 concoction failed—indeed, it yielded no practical application at all. Six years later ad man Peter Hodgson discovered the malleable material at a cocktail party when people were playing with it. He was writing a catalog for a toy company at the time and began selling it, investing $147. Silly Putty was born.

The agricultural combine harvester, in contrast, was eminently practical and came along more than a century earlier. In 1836 Hiram Moore hoped to revolutionize agriculture with a harvester that was pulled by a team of 20 horses. His invention cut the cost of harvesting by four-fifths while losing little of the ripened grain. He charged the more famous Cyrus McCormick with stealing some of his ideas, sparking extended litigation. Improvements like Moore’s enable us to feed increasing numbers of people with fewer farmers and less land.

Thomas Jefferson is credited with the invention of the swivel chair, though not its commercialization. He came up with the idea of a chair which rotated on a spindle and rollers. He had one made to his specifications, and apparently used it when drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776.